From Here & There

Modern Musings wrote: “Reading yesterday’s paper I found an article that spoke of the new Iran sanctions being prepared by the United Nations. Two sentences in this article got my blood boiling. I like being informed, I like keeping tabs on our government but I get so emotional, baby, that sometimes I can’t intelligently respond to the absurdities I encounter. So this is what the article stated:

“Acting U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the United States rejected amendments by Indonesia and Qatar calling for the Middle East to be free of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. U.S. officials said Iran’s nuclear program should be the sole focus.”

Just a few questions…

1. Why isn’t mandating a nuclear free Middle East a good thing?
2. Wouldn’t adopting such an amendment allow Iran to comply without losing her sovereignty as a nation in the eyes of her people?
3. Would Israel’s nuclear weapon stores be the cause of rejecting said amendment?”

United Nations complicity in war crimes: interview with Hans von Sponeck, or here
Count Hans-Christof von Sponeck, has been working for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for 32 years. Appointed in 1998 as United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, with the status of UN Assistant to the Secretary General, he resigned in March 2000 in protest against the sanctions, which had led the Iraqi people to misery and starvation. He speakes about the sufferings endured by the Iraqis and he appeals to the political leaders responsible for the catastrophe.

More about the UN: UNSC Role Change, Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

Terrorized by ‘War on Terror’:How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington Post
The Coming War With Iran, Is it inevitable? Justin Raimondo, Antiwar

Update:
Iran, Israel, The Big Lie and The Real Threat, by Frank Scott, Information Clearing House: “Attempting to portray Iran as a nuclear menace to Israel and the world, in that order, even though it has no nuclear weapons and Israel has hundreds, is not merely a sign of dementia. It is indication of near idiocy in a society that can be repeatedly manipulated into believing such totally crackpot notions that have no foundation in the material world but exist only in a world of superstitious psycho-fantasy.”

Keeping All Options on the Table: A Roadmap to Negotiation or War?
Farideh Farhi, Foreign Policy in Focus, March 6: ” … if the Iranian leadership thinks that negotiations and compromise on the nuclear issue will indeed lead to a breakthrough in relations with the United States and on the abandoning of its policy of weakening the Iranian regime. Without such an incentive, the hardliners in Iran will be able to run the show based on the argument that no matter how many concessions are given, American hostility will not end…”

A Century Of War

Control energy and you control the nations. Kissinger

What is most important to the history of the world? The Talliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold-war? – 1998 Brzezenski

Frederick William Engdahl has written on issues of energy, politics and economics for more than 30 years, beginning with the first oil shock in the early 1970s.

After a degree in politics from Princeton and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, he worked as an economist and free-lance journalist. He currently lives in Germany and in addition to writing regularly on issues of economics, energy and international affairs, is active as a consulting geopolitical risk economist.

Engdahl is the author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics: A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order.

The University of Michigan Press: This book is a gripping account of the murky world of the international oil industry and its role in world politics.

From George W. Bush’s election victory to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US politics and oil enjoy a controversially close relationship. The US economy relies upon the cheap and unlimited supply of this single fuel.

William Engdahl takes the reader through a history of the oil industry’s grip on the world economy… Moving from the post-World War I period up to the present day, he shows how oil is and has always been the motivating factor in international policy and conflicts.

Shedding light on the 1970s oil shocks and the grand strategy of Washington after the end of the Cold War, Engdahl presents a convincing case that geopolitics and oil were behind the collapse of the Soviet Union, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the rise and fall of the Taliban. He reveals evidence to show that the US and UK decision to go to war in Iraq was not simply an issue of corporate greed. It was a strategic move to control the world economy for the following half century or more. 

Frederick William Engdahl’s website

A must read: A New American Century? Iraq and the hidden euro-dollar wars 12-2006

See also: Calculating the risk of war with Iran 01- 2006

Behind Bush II’s War of Tyranny 02-2006

China lays down gauntlet in energy war 12-2005

Iraq and the problem of peak oil, 08-2004

Online book: How the world really works